Andrew Hansen is a very cool person. He is an undergraduate student here at California State University, Long Beach. He is originally from San Diego. The program that he is in from the CSULB School of Art is the Drawing & Painting program. Some experience Andrew has had with art is drawing and painting in high school, as well as later designing people’s tattoos. He described his tattoo designs as “traditional tattoos”. When Andrew started drawing and painting, he decided to stick with it and has been doing acrylic painting for 6 years. Andrew enjoys making sculptures as well as painting surfaces. Andrew has done a lot in his lifetime so far, he has even been in the NAVY. A very cool dude who painted a very cool piece.

Formal Analysis

This piece of Andrew’s is called “Bar Scene #1” and it took him about 4 months to paint. The media is oil paint. Andrew had mentioned that the man getting carded was painted purple because he wanted to mess with lighting and purple gave cool tones to the painting. There are no defined outlines in this painting, which makes the piece look more abstract and together. There were no distinct shapes in this painting which added to the painting looking more abstract. What I loved about this piece was how he played with shaddows, it gave more dimension to this piece.

Content Analysis

Andrew titled this piece “Bar Scene #1” (I’m looking forward to a Bar Scene #2 if he ever paints one!) which explains why someone is getting carded. I believe Andrew was going for cooler tones when he painted this piece. Everyone in this painting is a close friend of his, which was very kind of him to include them all. The hand in this painting that is carding the purple man is his hand because he himself is a bouncer. Andrew also talked about how the girl in the center is somewhat like the “center of attention” to this painting.

Synthesis / My experience

I thought this was a very interesting piece. The man in green actually reminded me a little bit of Frankenstein, so when Andrew said the people in this painting were of his close friends, I wondered what this man in the painting looked like in real life. The whole bar scene was interesting to me because I have never actually been to a bar, but now I have seen one through the perspective of a bouncer. I also saw a lot of other pieces in the exhibition, Why Not? that caught my eye and I was saddened that I was not able to talk to more artists. I did hear a few backstories to some of the paintings while also listening to Andrew, so that was interesting. Overall, this was the first time I have ever been in the Art Galleries at CSULB, and I had a great time.